Astronomers Led by Physics Graduate Student Austin Hoag Discover One of Universe's Most Distant Galaxies

Astronomers led by a graduate student at the University of California, Davis, have discovered one of the most distant galaxies in the universe, and it’s nothing out of the ordinary.

“Other most distant objects are extremely bright and probably rare compared to other galaxies,” said Austin Hoag, a UC Davis graduate student in physics who is lead author on the paper, published April 10 in Nature Astronomy. “We think this is much more representative of galaxies of the time.”

These ultradistant galaxies, seen as they were close to the beginning of the universe, are interesting to Hoag, UC Davis physics professor Marusa Bradac, and collaborators in the U.S., Australia and Europe because they fall within the “Epoch of Reionization,” a period about a billion years after the Big Bang when the universe became transparent.